About The Kids: Elmwood School: District plans mustn’t use pupils as pawns

Dick Blume/The Post Standard
DENYM MASON (left) and Jaden Hunter, students at Elmwood Elementary School in Syracuse, working on their library designs for last year’s Target, Heart of Amer´ica school library makeover contest.

To the Editor:

Using the children of Elmwood Elementary School as pawns on the chessboard of the Syracuse school system is not the answer to the problem. Why should the children have to have their little lives thrown into a situation that will be insecure and frightening to them?

As everyone well knows, the foundation of the rest of their learning starts in the elementary school. To now even consider not only moving them, but scattering them to several different schools is showing no regard for their safety or future.

Are you going to consider the big brother who walks his little sister to school to be sure that she arrives without incident? Or the mother who takes the time to see her children to the neighborhood school before she has to go to work?

Elmwood Elementary School is one of the structures that has been a firm foundation in our Elmwood community. Having once lived in this area for over 50 years, I enjoyed knowing that my children could safely walk in their own neighborhood to school and with Elmwood Presbyterian Church right across the street, there was always a haven for their safety.

During fire drills or the awful period of bomb threats, Elmwood Church was always open for the children to go to for safety and comfort — this was their neighborhood and this community cared about every one of them then, and still does today.

Betty Waters
Camillus

Use existing buildings to solve school issues

To the Editor:

Syracuse City School District building and renovation plans should focus on utilizing existing buildings and strengthening neighborhoods.

The Syracuse City School District’s recent lightning-fast decision to close Elmwood Elementary and Bellevue Academy over parental objections, together with its year-long back-room negotiations with respect to the $28.2 million lease of the former Syracuse Developmental Center, should prompt local residents to demand the opportunity for additional public comment regarding the SCSD’s long-term building and renovation plans.

The SCSD owns more school properties than it currently uses, many of which are vacant and slowly blighting our city. Properties such as the former Central High School and the former St. Anthony di Padua school (described in an Aug. 8, 2010 Post-Standard article), as well as a number of other shuttered Catholic schools, have long been suggested for redevelopment but dismissed by the SCSD as too expensive to bring up to current code requirements.

Yet the long-term lease and renovation of a sprawling, asbestos-contaminated campus, requiring daily bussing of young children from their own neighborhoods to the northernmost section of the city, was attempted without public feedback.

Any detailed estimates or studies that assess the viability and cost of renovating existing city-owned buildings (by installing elevators and accessibility ramps presumably costing less than $28.2 million) should be released so that the public can evaluate their findings.

As an alternative to closing neighborhood schools, many of which are hubs of community activity in their respective neighborhoods, the SCSD should seek to close its budget gap by selling its own headquarters property on Harrison Street, an idea which was previously raised during the last mayoral race by Steve Kimatian.